‘Greedy, thieving, conniving bastards’
p2pnet news view Politics | Music:- ‘We humans are greedy, thieving, conniving bastards, every last one of us. That’s why there are laws to stop us.”
That’s British Phonographic Industry (BPI) deputy chairman Mike Batt (bottom right).
This may apply to Batt and his cohorts, but 99.9% of the population in Britain and elsewhere are reasonable people who’ll behave reasonably if they’re treated reasonably.
However, the BPI’s masters, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US), accuse their own customers of being criminals and thieves as they harry and harass them in the court rooms of the world.
Their aim is the gain control of online music distribution and the reality is, of course, it’s the Big 4 who are greedy, thieving, conniving bastards.
Batt’s observation comes in a tacky Times Online puff piece dressed up as an editorial.
Prefacing his comment is, “If you could download a loaf of bread free you would. But you can’t, thank God, because otherwise bakers would cease to exist and there would be no bread to download. Then we’d all be dead, and good riddance to us …”
Draconian measures
The hard-pressed but honest multi-billion-dollar corporate music industry says it’s struggling to survive against the depredations of “massive distributors of copyrighted music,” some of them 12 years old, or even younger
But all hope has not been lost. ISPs are, “talking to record companies in order to limit online music theft through their broadband channels is good news for everyone except those who think all music should be free and musicians should go out of business,” says Batt, failing to mention the BPI appears to have completely and deliberately distorted the situation as seen from the ISP perspective.
Carphone Warehouse, “insists it’s prepared to walk away from the table if draconian measures are introduced,” said PC Pro, quoting a spokesman as stating unequivocally:
“Our priority is always to protect our customer. We will look at any sensible suggestion … We haven’t got any plans to adopt any of those other measures at the moment.”
And it’s reasonable to believe BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSky, the other major UK ISPs being dragged into this by the corporate music industry, share those sentiments, even if they’re reluctant to say so in public.
Nor, it appears, is the UK government as firmly behind the Big 4 as Batt and his boss, Geoff Taylor (left), would like people to believe.
‘Constructive spirit of finding solutions’
“A hardline letter sent by the BPI at the 11th hour threatened to undermine a deal to tackle illegal filesharing, prompting the government to express its displeasure of the music industry body in a terse response to record label executives,” says TechRadar, going on the BPI’s letter, signed by Taylor, was also copied to baroness Shriti Vadera, the business minister, on the morning of July 23, the day a high controversy memorandum of understanding (MoU) was set to be signed by the BPI, the ISPs and Hollywood’s MPAA.
“[The] BPI may determine that it is necessary to bring legal action against one or more ISPs under current legislation to protect its members’ rights, notwithstanding any steps that may be taken pursuant to the MoU,” read its letter, adding “further action by ISPs is required” such as, “blocking access to websites that procure and facilitate online infringement” and the threat the BPI “reserves the right to exercise its existing legal rights to require such action when it deems appropriate.”
But Taylor and his letter were given short shrift by Vadera, says The Guardian, going on »»»
Vadera, who sent a reply copying in Guy Hands, the chief executive of EMI owner Terra Firma, and senior executives at Universal, Sony BMG and Warner Music, expressing her displeasure.
“I was disappointed at the timing, tone as well as content of the attached letter from you yesterday,” she said in a letter addressed to Taylor sent on July 24. “I am glad I was able to ensure that the MoU got signed despite it.”
Vadera added that she hoped the “attitude” of the BPI would be “constructive” going forward.
She said that to deliver the benefits of measures agreed in the MoU there was a need for a “goodwill and a grown-up constructive spirit of finding solutions”.
“Goodwill” and a “grown-up constructive spirit” from the Big 4?
Stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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August 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
“…humans are greedy, thieving, conniving bastards…”
HEY NOW, my parents were married when they had me…
It would appear that Mr. Batt sees more of himself in others than is warranted. Pretty normal for a human, but it doesn’t make it true. We can leave our doors unlocked in my town, at least until Mr. Batt shows up.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:34 am
People tend to look around their environment and believe the world-at-large is just like what they see in their microcosm. It hints strongly at his work environment and what he sees and experiences within it. In otherwords, he works in a gutter where greedy, thieving, conniving bastards, are clustered. It speaks to me more of the industry he works and surrounds himself with than it does the world-at-large.
It’s like the thief that claims there is no honor among thieves.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I like how he project from him (the musicPARASITE) to them (the musicMAKER)
I guess not one of those that infringe copyrights want that musicians get out of business (that is if they think that there “business” is to make good music and not work for juat a measely loaf of bread as slaves of the Industry)
What some of those copyrightinfringers (”pirates”) might want however it that those parasites like Batt “get out of business!
There was music and musicians hundreds of thousands of years already before organised music popped up not nearly 100 years ago.
and musicians that make music people want to hear will still exist when pirates have extinct parasites like Bratt the BPI, The RIAA andwhat ever else acronym those musicPARASITES are using.
Quote:
[...]When will it be time to declare war on them, to engage in file-sharing not because we love music, but because we hate the record companies?
Unquote
I say every minute now!
August 1st, 2008 at 2:09 pm
This is because the parasites of the entertainement industry are greedy, thieving, and conniving bastards and of course this kind of people believe that every one else is like them.
Well guess what? They are wrong, dead Wrong. There is some people so outraged by what they are doing to others that they are ready to get ride of them and their business Watch out for the pest killers! it is easier to detroy a business than to build one. They started a war aganist the people and the people are striking back. if they think this is bad time it is only the begining.
The destruction of the current entertainment industry is inevitable.
Sorry for the Frecnhies at Vivendi/Universal. It is too late to surrender.
We are the customer. We decide who get our money and who don’t. We decided that this entertainment parasite don’t!
We don’t need parasites in our societies.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:45 pm
The analogy doesn’t work unless it’s poisoned bread.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:16 pm
” “If you could download a loaf of bread free you would. ”
The anaology SORT OF works.
You CAN make your own bread, much more cheaply than if you bought it,
so why aren’t bakers out of business ?
The ‘Hassle’ factor.
It’s a pain in the keister to make it yourself, so we are willing to pay a bit more for
the convenience of having someone else do it for us.
So why download ?
the ‘Hassle’ factor.
It is a pain in the ass because of DRM to do what with want to with our ‘legitimate’ purchase.
Supposedly we should not be allowed to put it on multiple devices as we see fit, no time shifting
of their valuable property, not even backups to protect our purchase.
They themselves have raised the hassle factor so high that it just makes sence to download before you
buy, just so you can have copies that you can use however you want, and avoid paying for something
that turns out to be crap that you can’t even return for a refund.
If the RIAA members were the Baker, then the bread could only be eaten when and where they tell us it could be.
If real bakers did that, do you think they might be in a little bit of trouble ?
August 1st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
This is fun, lets take it a little further
The RIAA as , heh , bakers would have control of al the bakeries so that they
all would be selling bread at the same ridiculous mark up.
most of the slices would be moldy, but you wouldn’t be allowed to get your money
back, you could only get another loaf of potentially moldy bread .. to protect the
profitability of the poor baker of course.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Funny how people with evil minds excuse and divert attention from themselves by posturing that everyone is as they are.
A copy of a song is not a loaf of bread. It is like a sketch of one. If I painted a replica of a famous painting would that be
illegal? No, and I am even entitled to sell it for whatever I can get, as long as I don’t claim it’s an original. Since my
downloaded music would not have been otherwise bought, or I already own in another format, neither is it depriving of sales,
and thus the contrived “theft” argument falls flat. A copy of a song is not a new product, as is each loaf of bread, which time
and ingredients have gone into.
But would I obtain a free loaf of bread if was meant to be paid for, if I could get away with it? Not at all, and I’m sure many
others feel the same.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I just keep praying for the day the major recording industry “giants” are left impotent and useless. The day where they are meaningless and the benefits they provide to artists are non-existent because the artists are able to distribute their music at far less expense than it used to be. The day where the music industry titans finally seen for the parasites they are…living off of works they had little to no hand in actually creating.
Oh wait, that was 5 years ago…nvm.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 am
“If you could download a loaf of bread free you would. But you can’t, thank God, because otherwise bakers would cease to exist and there would be no bread to download. Then we’d all be dead, and good riddance to us …”
I am so sick of the “stealing” analogies these corporate parasites keep coming up with. The one I see most often is where file sharers are likened to thieves stealing a car. As has been pointed out many times (can people like Mike Batt not read?), downloading a file equals duplication and distribution without permission, aka so called copyright infringement. If I was able to duplicate a car (or a loaf of bread in this case) and give it away to anyone that wanted one, which is the true equivalent of uploading a file, I happily would. Sound like science fiction to you? Only for the time being. Time changes everything, and while the recording industry may heartily wish this wasn’t so, it has proven especially true for technology. God bless science.
All great inventions started out as nothing more than a simple idea, often times a crazy sounding impossible idea. History shows us that with time and the right discoveries, all ideas have the potential to become reality. If Einstein and his ilk were correct, and there has never been any evidence showing they weren’t, human mastery of both energy and matter may not be all that far off. Imagine being able to create pretty much anything, seemingly out of thin air. When that day comes a whole lot of people are going to be out of a job. Is that bad? Not when poverty becomes a thing of the past because of it. Despite our inherent laziness, humans will eventually be forced to focus on the betterment of themselves and society. And guess what? Even when that day inevitably comes, artists will still be needed! Culture will become just one of several of the most important cornerstones of human civilization. Artists will weave their craft out of a true passion for it, as well as for the betterment of the human race, not the almighty dollar. So you see, artists will continue to have the same importance to society just as they’ve always had. It is the middlemen whom there was never any need for and it is they, the true parasites that have been feeding off the hard work of others, who will die the quickest. The ability to record something to a medium and distribute that medium for money has only been around for a very short time and it’s day is clearly coming to a close. All good things must come to an end as the saying goes, and when future historians look back they will likely see the corporate recording industry exactly as it has been during the whole of the 20th century; completely and utterly insignificant, having contributed nothing of interest nor value to society, a minor historical footnote at best. Hopefully it will be the artists and their creations that will be remembered and celebrated, exactly as they rightly should be, much as we do so now with the likes of Shakespeare, Mozart, Socrates and so many others.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:44 am
reasonable person you are right.
“If I was able to duplicate a car (or a loaf of bread in this case) and give it away to anyone that wanted one, which is the true equivalent of uploading a file, I happily would. Sound like science fiction to you? Only for the time being. Time changes everything, and while the recording industry may heartily wish this wasn’t so, it has proven especially true for technology. God bless science.”
yes, anyone remembers when Lt. Uhura had this first bluetooth headset now nearly 40 years ago already? Back then it was expensive and could only be bought by the powerful headquartes of the federation. Same with the small food replicators or the bigger ones for more complex stuff.
Well, with the bluetooth headsets the prize is low enough already that nearly everybody can put one of those into his ear, and with the replicators…
…
they are working on the retail prize…
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:15 am
Sam said:
“A copy of a song is not a loaf of bread. It is like a sketch of one.”
A self-serving lie. This is the self-deceptive illusion shared by pirates only in support of this new kind of digitally assisted shoplifting. A loaf of bread would be comparable to “a sketch of one” if the sketch were identical and indistinguishable by the baker himself from the original loaf, therefore aromic, nutritional, wholly consumable and using current technology to preclude the need to properly and financially honor the efforts of the baker and the value of the raw materials, the expense of the bakery itself, every aspect of the creation of the original. This remains one of the greatest digital lies of our time and bears all responsibility for the controls currently being placed upon the network.
Legislative trends are not going well for net neutrality, online privacy and general freedoms overall, a direct reflection of the lies lived and acted upon daily by anyone who would take something that is for sale but without paying for it.
As long as illegal downloaders and their supportive websites continue to pretend this debate along disingenuous lines of thought that (rather conveniently and not incidentally) “just happen to enrich the downloader” at the expense of the copyright holder, the hypocrisy of their stance will compel the trend towards surveillance, isp control, law enforcement, conviction and punishment. Never was the basic legal concept of doing what is right for property ownership and the laws that protect and encourage its’ creation…… ever in any doubt. This has only ever been an issue of when, and when draws closer everyday.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:32 am
The lengths that people will go to , to avoid admitting they are stealing , puffing up their chests with deflective arguments based on the same old “billion dollar industry” quote wheeled out , as if that justifies them stealing something . Grow a bloody spine and admit they are thieves .
Reasonable Person ? pretentious , misguided and living in some pretend world .
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 am
The parasites of the creative industry are dying off, they are fighting a battle they have already lost, and had zero chance of winning….to the last two posters, go fuck yourselves.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 am
SAMIAM. What a load of bollocks.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
don’t feed the trolls
That’s the one who admitted he’s full of it, and is just trying to hook suckers.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Mike Batt -> a pr jerk, with foot in the mouth disease.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:11 am
“The lengths that people will go to , to avoid admitting they are stealing. . .”
This is true. All these legal manoeuvers bulliing and cutomers harassement you music industry parasites are doing just not to admit that you were stilling from both the artists and the public for so many years!
If I was you I would not have started all this BS because we will not have put our nose into your bsiness and discover what a pack of psychopatic criminals you are.
You are a bunch of neocon and a disgrace to the society. You are so stupid that I am suprised that you are still alive. You are probably not even smart enought to breath and will become extinct soon.
Since you are a paid troll warn your masters at parasites central that we are comming for them, that we are going to raid their homes, jack their cars, take their stuff and that we will use the bounty collected to compensate their victims.
Mark my world!
August 5th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I am no paid troll at all , if people wish to use this site to merely pat each other on the back and say how clever they are with deflective argument go ahead – but dont have a kneejerk answer that Im a troll and incorrect . I am correct – if people take goods and dont pay they are thieves not some sort of `american hero` , but as my point was specific it did not need to expand to the record companies . But to correct the balance and make “two rights” , yes , you are 100% correct , the music industry is no better whatsoever if not 3million degrees worse , continually ripping off artists with whatever method they care to use , whether its not paying them the correct royalties , contracts that are restrictive and underpaying , docking them royalties on a percentage basis for broken media and even docking them that same percentage on digital sales as well , without even starting on their tactics against filesharers but …………..if those people are taking without paying they are still thieves .
Tell me to “feck myself” or whatever doesnt make me wrong , it just makes you incapable of making an intelligent argument – because you commented on something I didnt say , that you thought I was saying BUT DID NOT – assumption is the mother of all feckups .
My original comment still stands – people who steal are thieves , full stop – record company or filesharer , its just a psychological block that people dont want to admit that to themselves .It is a question of degrees though , people are parasites/thieves but record companies are far far worse – scale of 1 to 10 ? filesharers 1-2 , people who download to sell on 6-7 . record companies 9-10 .
And the above writer – go back to bed , youve got school in the morning , you semi-literate idiot .
August 25th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I agree with your numerical rating and would like to add that personally I reserve the word “thief” for people who make money off of other folks work. Even worse are those whom claim the work of others as their own. The only thing your average file sharer is guilty of when downloading a file is copyright infringement. In other words they made a copy of something without permission. Hardly comparable to someone who breaks into houses to steal valuables, shoplifting, or robbing a bank. Those with vested interests would like the courts to see your average innocuous copyright infringement, a rather innocent act similar to borrowing a CD or DVD from a friend, on par with committing murder. Sensationalist insanity which any reasonable person knows instinctively to be complete hogwash.
Seeing as one cannot return most forms of entertainment medium for a refund, I for one am glad that, thanks to the internet, I have the ability to try before I buy. Imagine what the world would be like if everything you purchased was sold as is, no refunds. There would be no shortage of folks lined up to pull a fast one and make a quick buck. The middle men of the entertainment industry aren’t much different, and it’s one of the inherent problems with capitalism and human nature. I think it is safe to assume that most folks would jump at the chance to make millions for nothing. All you need is greed and a penchant for being uncaring of others, something most of the human race is very good at.
Regarding the “pretentious” and “living in some pretend world”, spend some time reading everything you can find on atoms and subatomic particles. Does anti-matter sound like science fiction to you? To most the answer would be yes, and so I would suggest reading up how a PET scan works. My comment does sound like something out of Star Trek, but ask yourself… where did they get the idea from? Science is a wonderful thing, the innate human drive to learn new things and understand our universe even more so. My biggest regret will always be that I won’t be around to find out which human behavior will win out in the end; our capacity for violence and inflicting unfathomable suffering on all other living beings, the depth of our greed and the completely petty unreasonable things it drives us to do, or our drive to better ourselves and our world through tolerance and understanding. Right or wrong, in agreement or opposed, every news story and comment you read comes down to one thing; human nature, and nature vs nurture it is not an easy thing for anyone to overcome.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
…we humans are greedy, thieving, conniving bastards, every last one of us…
Now we know why the BPI habitually treat its customers as criminals; the fact that that’s the explicit view of its Deputy Chairman states the case pretty clearly. Yeah!!! send those greed bastards to us and we’ll exploit them! http://www.greedypeople.com